It is just a coincidence, astronomers say, that on the day a 130,000 tonne
asteroid is due to narrowly miss the Earth, another comes down over Siberia.
“But,” Dr Chris Lintott, presenter of the Sky at Night, says, “it’s a pretty
big coincidence.”

The reason he can be so certain is that the spectacular
meteor that passed across the Russian sky today travelled from east to
west while asteroid 2012 DA14 – the lump of rock half the size of a football
pitch that is due to skim past our planet tonight – will go from south to
north. These are intersecting